I caught up to the manga a few weeks ago after finishing the anime on the same day, and I must say, I have never marathoned an anime so hard in my life. It was a bit of a slow start, but I still feel the beginning had a lot of charm to it, and looking back, there is a LOT of foreshadowing that happens early on. With all the hate that it gets, I was expecting to be at least a little disappointed, but nope, it's easily one of my top 10 favorite series at this point. I even enjoyed some of the filler. To think that I overlooked this for so long because of that 4kids dub when I was a kid...